For the last few months I’ve been sensing an underlying nagging feeling before starting my work days. I still feel content. I like owning my business and the life it provides. There’s just been an underlying feeling that I can’t identify and I can’t shake off.

I’ve had the ongoing thoughts for several years that I’d like to try something new. I’d like to move away from my current business and start fresh. But it’s hung around long enough, and reappears during each phase of the ups and downs, that I’m starting to really listen to it.

To dull the above mentioned nagging feeling I do what most sensible people do. I scroll through Twitter. And that’s when I realized what the nagging feeling is. Burnout.

This tweet popped up in my feed with the diagnosis. I’m not sure who retweeted or how it appeared in front of me. But there it was.

I thought I was combating against burnout with my A+ work/life balance.

Burnout never seemed like a possibility for me because I don’t work too much. I’ve learned a lot about not letting work creep into every aspect of my life and take pride in my ‘successful’ work/life balance. 

But reading that tweet struck a chord in me. I never thought of burnout. I thought I was just itching for something new. But you know something is true when it hits deep like that. This is burnout.

How did I get here?

My wife and I purchased our business the month after our oldest son’s first birthday. We were all in on making it work. And we have. We’ve created a good work/life balance. We’ve created a strong brand with loyal customers. We’ve expanded product categories, grown revenue and we’ve learned a ton.

We’ve raised two boys, moved to a new town, built a house and gone on a bunch of adventures all while running this business together. The business is a part of our family. It’s been central to our daily lives and instrumental in the bigger picture of our lives.

But there’s a ceiling that the business keeps bumping into. We never seem to be able to get all cylinders to fire at once to break through to the next level. It starts to weigh us down after a while. 

The golden handcuffs

I know what needs to be done to get to the next level of growth. I see the steps we should take to make it happen. But that unidentified nagging feeling creeps in and my energy drops. What I thought was self-doubt or fear has come into focus as burnout.

We have emotionally invested a lot into this business. Though we’ve tried our hardest not to let it happen, some of our identity is wrapped up in this thing. In some ways, this business is our third kid.

So now it makes sense that the nagging feeling is there. It’s the hard-to-identify sign of burnout. I’ve put a lot into this business and it’s not giving me back the returns I’m expecting. 

It’s not failing. I could stick with it for years and have a good life. It would be easy to shut off that nagging part of my brain and just keep getting paid. I think they call that the golden handcuffs.

How to fight burnout without burning it down

But that’s not what I signed up for. I don’t want to just phone it in every week.

This is the challenge for the solopreneurs and small business owners; how do you combat burnout without burning your whole business down at the same time?

I don't have the answer, but I do have some ideas. Instead of 'building in public' maybe I'll try 'burnout in public' and see what can come of it.